Conventionally, parents wishing to limit their children's access to the Internet are reduced to taking the child's computer or mobile device away, installing client-side parental-control software on the child's computer or mobile device and configuring the parental-control software to only allow access between specified times, on each device. Unfortunately, such client-side parental-control software is easily circumvented by tech-savvy children. Indeed, the software may be disabled by removing the software, returning the computer or mobile device to its factory configuration, and other techniques. This renders the parent's job difficult and requires a great deal of day-to-day involvement on the parent's part, rendering such client-side parental-control software less than practical or easy to use, in most cases.
The other way to limit a child's access to the Internet would be to physically disable the router and/or modem when access is to be disabled. However, this also prevents all other users from accessing the network.
What are desired, therefore, are methods and devices that would enable a parent to effectively limit a child's access to the Internet to a selectable number of hours a day or week. Such methods and devices should not require the installation and maintenance of client-side parental-control software and should be effective to apply selectable access restrictions to all or selected devices accessing the Internet. Finally, such methods and devices should be relatively tamper-proof by children and should allow flexibility in setting and changing the number of hours or minutes computers and mobile devices are allowed to access the Internet.